Corsica, mountains as well as seaside

Geography

Bathed in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, during your trip to Corsica you are going to understand that it's not nicknamed the Island of Beauty for nothing. At a little over 8,600 square kilometres, Corisca is the 4th largest island in the Mediterranean, behind Sicily, Sardinia and Cyprus. It has more than 1,000 kilometres of coastline and the island is a little more than 180 kilometres long from north to south and a little less than 85 kilometres wide from east to west. The average height is 570 m above sea level, so Corsica isn't just about beaches and paradaisical coves. Down the centre of the island runs a chain of mountains of which the highest is Mount Cinto, at 2,706 m. Almost half the island is covered in forests.

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Flickr@Leonhe2

Fauna and flora

From Barcaggio in the north to Bonifacio in the south, via Bastia, Calvi, Corte or Ajaccio, during your walks you will see lots of interesting flora and fauna.

In the sky you might be lucky enough to see the Corsican Nuthatch, which is endemic to Corsica, or the golden eagle, sparrow hawk, peregrine falcon, osprey or bearded vultures.

Fishing fans might catch sardines, wolf fish, red mullet, scorpion fish, lich, denti, moray eel, eel or barracuda. You can also find oysters, mussels and crawfish. Recently manta ray and trigger fish have been seen.

Apart from a few tortoise and vipers there are few reptiles in Corsica. Among its famous mammals are the sheep, wild boar and deer.

There are more than 2,800 species of plants, like, for example, asphodel, heather, arbutus, rock roses, mastica, oak, fig trees, chestnut trees, alder, pines and around 120 endemic species.